Invented Devices

“Van Leeuwenhoek was a distant cousin of mine,” my student Barry Brooks claimed at the start of a private meeting with me about his failing grade in Biology II. “I’ve studied his life and work,” Barry said, “and I’m telling you, Antonie would not have cared about a grade in some class. He was beyond that sort of thing. He went his own way.”

“You’re saying that you grasp all the concepts we’ve covered during lectures, and you’ve done the lab work, but you don’t have time to provide me, or yourself, with a record of what you’ve learned?” I couldn’t fathom what Barry’s supposed relation to the “Father of Microbiology” had to do with the here-and-now.

“Of course I understand the material! Most of it is elementary! But, like my cousin, I prefer to work alone. And I do have records of what I've learned on my own.” Barry seemed unworried about grades.

“Have you been grinding your own lenses, Barry? Do you possess skills that I can’t even imagine?”

“Actually, I do.”

I didn’t know what to say. Young Brooks’s confidence was impenetrable. He didn’t participate much in class. I would see him smirking in the corner now and then. I wondered why he bothered to show up if he considered himself such a genius. Perhaps he got something from the company of other students. He hadn’t turned in any lab reports or bothered to show up for the first test.

“I’d like to visit your home laboratory,” I said, guessing that he might have one. I was wrong.

“Nature is my laboratory,” Barry said. “And my ears are my investigative tool. I am the first one to think of listening to microbes. I have invented devices for doing so, but, like my cousin, I don’t want to show them to anyone yet. There are sounds that no one else can hear. Sounds that reveal certain microbes’ intentions as they come into contact with various colonizable environments, living or dead.”

“Tell you what, Barry,” I said. “I’m going to request that you write me a letter or two about your experiments, just like Leeuwenhoek wrote letters to the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Would you be willing to do that?”

“I would,” Barry said. We shook hands on it.

I felt I had handled the situation well. I was looking forward to what Barry had to tell me about the sounds of microbes. Perhaps he was onto something. Also, perhaps it was simply late in the day, and I’d fallen for the most original excuse I’d heard in years.

— Macoff